Israel Trip 2016: Biblical creation lectures

On Saturday 4th June we returned from our 2½ week tour of Israel where my wife, Christina and I teamed up with 14 others from Australia, USA, NZ, Japan and Finland. The trip combined a biblical creation ministry with a 10 day tour of the sites around Israel, with a focus of relevant Bible history and creation science teaching. Our tour guide was a professional archeologist and Christian. The tour was sponsored by a Finish Christian outreach ministry. We were also supported by Israeli Messianic congregations and an Israeli Messianic conference ministry.

Biblical creation lectures, “8 Reasons Why Evolution is Foolish” (JGH), “The Heavens Declare…” (JGH), “Evidence for a Young Universe” (RH), “Cosmic Magnets” (RH) and “Flood Geology” (JB), “A Linguistic Argument” (JB) and others were delivered all over the country. They were given at:

Why are your polemics 100% nay-saying? If the universe began last week as you insist, surely you’d be able to present ONE piece of evidence? Instead it’s the usual catalogue of “problems” with the standard model, long refuted claims of irreducible complexity, and discredited arguments on the improbability of “randomness” producing life. How about campaigning to end child marriage in the developing world? There’s a dragon worth slaying.

I disagree. It is important to destroy the failed theories of origins like the big bang. Only then, after the dust clears, can you see clearly what’s left. And that is that the Creator essentially created the world and the universe as we see it. There is much evidence that I and others have presented that is in support of a youth earth or young universe. But if you have an evolutionary worldview it would be hard for you to see that it does. Watch Evidence For a Young World – Part 1 with Dr. Russell Humphreys – Origins, part I and part II here. But I do agree with you about ending child marriage in the developing world and in Muslim societies.

I know biology isn’t your day job. It’s not mine either, but I’ve managed to keep up with the IC debate. You present the impossibility of bacterial flagella evolving as settled fact, whereas there are perfectly good models for how this and other IC systems evolve. IC systems have been observed evolving, so that Dawkins quote is misplaced. Or maybe he’s out of date too: that’s not unknown. Your “worldview” is a pretext for ignoring the vast bulk of what we already know. It’s like you cling to Ptolemaic epicycles (the data fits here and there) while the rest of us embrace Kepler (because it works ALL of the time).

The same goes for Flood Geology. If you demanded the same standards of evidence and consistency from this as you do from astrophysics, you would delete all mention of it from your lectures! PLEASE investigate it more. A good start is geomagnetic reversals and ocean plate basalt, or cratering. You love “problems” with a theory: you are rich indeed when to comes to Flood Geology or CPT. Be forensic in your appraisal of cosmology, but please don’t tolerate crass pseudoscience in a different field.

It’s around this stage of previous conversations that you’ve decided it’s over. I wonder if you’ll answer my points this time. Carriers of misinformation must be challenged. You’re guilty of recycling technical arguments that are well known to be wrong.

Rob, Yes, biology is not my day job, and I am no expert, but “that Dawkins quote is [NOT] misplaced”. I believe you are referring to the one where he said:“Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it has not been observed while it’s happening.” He was essentially thinking of the fossil record with respect to his first sentence, and then makes the admission that actual change has not been observed in living organisms. That is still true. Not out of date. But regarding IC models, there may well be some advances there, as you say, I don’t know, but it hardly helps because you have far bigger fish to fry.

Dr. James Tour is a professor of chemistry, computer science, and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. He has written over 590 research publications and over 100 patents, and he is the recipient of numerous scientific awards. He much smarter than me and he has been looking at this issue of the evolutionary origin of life. In his most recent paper, a 12,000-word essay titled “Animadversions of a Synthetic Chemist,” Tour tackles the question that has puzzled scientists for centuries: Where did life come from? That is, naturalistically. The essay was published in the most recent edition of Inference: International Review of Science. He wrote:

“Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins,” …. “What is the chemistry behind their origin? Biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for their synthesis.” … “They have been grossly misinformed,” … “And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. If they need a molecule, they purchase molecular synthesis kits, which are, of course, designed by synthetic chemists, and which feature simplistic protocols. Polysaccharides? Their origin? The synthetic chemists do not have a pathway. The biologists do not have a clue.”

Tour writes of the impossible task facing scientists who want to replicate life’s origin in the lab, ie. abiogenesis.

“Under prebiotic conditions the reaction in question is not likely to yield anything useful. With each added step, difficulties are compounded by improbabilities so overwhelming that no other field of science would depend upon such levels of faith,” … “Abiogenesis research would never be accepted in any other area of chemistry. The field is its own best enemy.”

And he is no creationist.

On Flood geology, not my field, I don’t think it is the same argument as astrophysics at all. I critique not some much astrophysics but cosmology because of the inherent worldview it requires to believe the big bang. Flood geology does need to be internally consistent, I agree. But its worldview is biblical and I make no apology for that being far superior worldview to an evolutionary big bang worldview. So i am biased that way as you are within your worldview. And there have been several who have developed good models as you mention, which also include the rapid polarity reversals of the earth magnetic field. That is ongoing with a few. But I am not involved so I can only rely on what they have published.

You don’t do yourself any credibility calling it pseudoscience either. Name calling won’t help your argument. You should ask yourself, why? Jesus said of the unbelievers when He was speaking to them in parables:

“For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Matthew 13:15)

And as a consequence of not listening to what He has said, He wrote:

“So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:49,50)

Jesus also said: “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” His caveat “As long as, and only if, he buys a very particular and contentious reading of scripture that flies in the face of every known fact” seems to have gone unrecorded to my knowledge. I don’t remember saying anywhere that I’m not a Christian. Now you find it appropriate to threaten me with hellfire. Well, you have a nice day too!

If geology isn’t your field, all the more reason to fact-check I would have thought! You present, as fact, ideas based entirely on misconceptions and the rejection of inconvenient material. All have been comprehensively debunked, and a few minutes’ research on the web would supply the necessary. Whatever the theological worthiness of Flood Geology, it’s totally unsupported by the data. When a hypothesis only accounts for a few easy data points while ignoring the bulk of the data, all of which points in another direction entirely, it well deserves the label pseudoscience. This is not name calling! Moving the goalposts to abiogenesis doesn’t get you round the failings of Flood Geology or Intelligent Design. Your distaste for the Big Bang doesn’t get you round the nonetheless unambiguous evidence that the universe and the earth are billions of years old.

It’s completely wrong to say there are no observed examples of evolution, or even speciation. There are several compelling examples of (supposed) irreducible complexity evolving in the wild and in the lab. Please look it up. The Dawkins quote qualifies as quote-mining as well as being misplaced. Here’s a quote from the Panda’s Thumb blog:
“There is nothing wrong with challenging conventional wisdom – continuing challenge is a core feature of science. But challengers should at least be aware of, read, cite, and specifically rebut the actual data that supports conventional wisdom, not merely construct a rhetorical edifice out of omission of relevant facts, selective quoting, bad analogies, knocking down strawmen, and tendentious interpretations. Unless and until the “intelligent design” movement does this, they are not seriously in the game. They’re not even playing the same sport.”

I was not accusing you of either being a Christian or not being one. Nor was I threatening you with Hellfire. What I was saying was that you should ask yourself, why? Why do you find it necessary to call names? The connection to what Jesus said is this. He spoke in parables, He said, so that some could not understand. Why could they not understand? Because of the hardness of their hearts. Maybe you don’t understand, for whatever reason. That could apply to anyone, Christian or non-Christian. I think motives have consequences, as Jesus said. Now probably you and I would never agree. But that is probably the one thing we can agree on.

I don’t agree with you either on the Flood geology, i.e. that it has little support. All geological data supports it. It is only a matter of correct interpretation. The Earth surface is covered in Flood deposits. Nor do I agree that the evidence is unambiguous that the universe and the earth are billions of years old. Again it is a matter of interpretation of the same evidence. There is no such thing as an absolute age dating method. The universe does not tell us how old it is nor do any rocks. Age is a human construct designed to fit in with his philosophical worldview. I have pointed out for years now that the standard big bang model has so many fudge factors that it should have been discarded long ago. The big bang explanation for the origin of the universe is rooted in pagan philosophy. But the reason it must be maintained at all costs is not science but philosophy. The cosmologist cannot tolerate the notion that this universe is the product of special creation by an intelligence greater than his.

If you claim evidence for evolution you are being disingenuous. I agree there is oodles of evidence for speciation but that is not evolution. To say so means you mid-stream change the definition of ‘evolution’. Speciation occurs without doubt, but nearly 100% of cases involve a loss of information, or at best a mutation is neutral or only slightly deleterious. But that is not what is needed. It certainly is not ‘evolution’ unless you believe that by losing information over billions of years organisms produce new complex coded information. No, it is a bait-and-switch ploy.

I have explained the circumstances of the Darwkins quote and even if you understood the circumstantial evidence that he has in his head it still is valid and not out of context, because he blindly believes that the changes he sees in the fossil record (which is assumed to be a record of change of one organism into another, without proof) are due to mutation and natural selection. But considering the enormous force of 99.9% deleterious mutations in any genome, it would take a miracle for the rare putative beneficial mutation (if one ever occurred) to produce any positive change in an organism before it died due to the enormous gene loading it has to endure.